Officials asked attendees, already engaged in the first session of the meeting's last full day, to leave the Moscone South building. Other parts of the complex were not affected.

"It's certainly unexpected," commented Tom Moore, MD, of the University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita. "There's a couple of sessions I really wanted to see that were going on when the power went out, so hopefully they get rescheduled once the power comes back."

"If not, I'll have to check them out online," Moore told MedPage Today, adding that he was catching up on work and enjoying the California sunshine while he waited for the meeting to resume.

Two large sessions slated for the South building were moved to another building, but sessions that were underway when the power went out were interrupted.

Four morning oral abstract sessions with start times during the blackout were scrubbed, although Olson said a late-breaker session was rescheduled for the afternoon.

Regular afternoon programming was started shortly after the power went back on about 12:15 p.m., Olson said.

A spokeswoman for Pacific Gas and Electric linked the outage to an emergency shutdown switch for the buildings elevators. Exactly why that caused the outage is "part of the investigation," the spokeswomen said.

Attendees were offered a free lunch in a neighboring building.

The outage coincided with a noisy protest by green T-shirted Lyme disease activists, upset that the IDSA does not credit the existence of a chronic form of the illness.

"It is a beautiful day, and, frankly, I wasn't looking forward to spending a beautiful day in San Francisco inside a convention center, but I was looking forward to learning the science," Moore told MedPage Today.

Accessibility Statement

At MedPage Today, we are committed to ensuring that individuals with disabilities can access all of the content offered by MedPage Today through our website and other properties. If you are having trouble accessing www.medpagetoday.com, MedPageToday's mobile apps, please email legal@ziffdavis.com for assistance. Please put "ADA Inquiry" in the subject line of your email.